y,
he was more popular every time he appeared, and was greeted now by mad
applause, and shouts of "There's George!" and "Hello, George!"

And the Home Boys' Quartette from Emville was quite new, and various
solo singers and a "lady elocutionist" from San Francisco were heard
for the first time. The latter, who was on the program merely for a
"Recitation--Selected," was so successful with "Pauline Pavlovna," and
"Seein' Things at Night" that it was nearly ten o'clock before the
Governor was introduced.

However, he was at last duly presented to the applauding hundreds, and
came forward to the footlights to address them, and made everyone laugh
and feel friendly by saying immediately that he knew they hadn't come
out that evening to hear an old man make a long speech.

He said he didn't believe in speechmaking much, he believed in DOING
things; there were always a lot of people to stand around and make
speeches, like himself--and there was more laughter.

He said that he knew the business of the evening was the giving out of
these prizes here--he didn't know what was in these boxes--he indicated
the daintily wrapped and tied packages that stood on the little table
in the middle of the stage--but he thought every lady in the hall would
know before she went home, and perhaps some one of them would tell
him--and there was more laughter. He said he hoped that there was
something mighty nice in the largest box, because he understood that it
was to go to a fairy-godmother; he didn't know whether the good people
in the hall believed in fairies or not, but he knew that some of the
children in Old Paloma did, and he had seen and heard enough that day
to make him believe in 'em too! He'd heard of a fairy years ago who
made a coach-and-four out of a pumpkin, but he didn't think that was
any harder than to make a coach-and-six out of a hay-wagon, and put
twenty Cinderellas into it instead of one. He said it gave him great
pride and pleasure to announce that the first prize for to-day's
beautiful contest had been unanimously awarded to--

Sidney Burgoyne, watching him with fascinated eyes, her breath coming
fast and unevenly, her color brightening and fading, heard only so
much, and then, with a desperate impulse to get away, half rose to her
feet.

But she was too late. Long before the Governor reached her name, a
sudden outburst of laughter and clapping shook the hall, there was a
friendly stir and murmur about her; a hundred